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Everything in Solaris is virtualized. The network stack, cpu, everything. For instance, If you use Containers on Linux is the network stack virtualized? Is everything on Linux virtualized? Or only the Containers?

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Everything in Solaris is virtualized. The network stack, cpu, everything. For instance, If you use Containers on Linux is the network stack virtualized? Is everything on Linux virtualized? Or only the Containers?

so what exactly is the point? what does that offer that the real stuff can't? this is not a rhetorical question i'm legitimately wondering

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i still want to know what exactly makes solaris a cloud os, what makes it so much better for virtualization, and what it has to offer over linux or free-bsd at this point.

It has enterprise features... The problem with virtualization on every OS besides the new Solaris is that you need to run an entire OS for each virtualization.. The new Solaris supposedly lets you set up virtualized "zones" so you get all the benefits of virtualization without any of the drawbacks of losing all the hard drive space to multiple operating systems or getting hit with the redundant OS overhead of running multiple OSs, or having to worry about security updates for multiple OSs, on every server, etc. etc... It's sort of like Virtualization meets Chroot.. Then consider that you can easily take these "zones" and automatically duplicate them over to other hardware to add in redundancy.. Now imagine tens of thousands of servers where every server has their "zones" synchronized onto at least a few other servers which might not even be in the same country, let alone the same room... Where you can just walk around and power off random servers or even an entire data center and it won't matter and the customers won't even notice because of all the "enterprise class" redundancy... This is a "cloud" solution.. A whole ton of money poured into massively redundant self-managing server infrastructure and Oracle wants to be in on it...

Oracle doesn't screw around... They don't go after Amazon, Google, or Akamai, instead they go after the corporations and web companies that Google, Amazon and Akamai get there revenue from. Oracle tries to get those corps hooked on Oracle server support contracts which will cost those corps big money over very long periods of time.. Of course, Oracle doesn't present it that way, rather they present it as a solution that requires little to no staff and so it "saves money", but then if something does go wrong, needless to say, Oracle is always ready to send a whole bandwagon of "specialists" to your doorstep, each of which cost you $300/hr..

You'd be surprised how many corporate execs would rush to implement things like self-managing cloud hardware if they think it can cut down on their IT costs long term.. But they don't see the hidden Oracle consultation costs that always crop up when the company tries to grow or relocate. I've never seen a single company ever work with Oracle and NOT shot themselves in the foot in some way or another.

I don't have a problem with Solaris.. Never had... But Oracle.. Not good.. Even if they wave the Solaris banner... Not good...

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wow sidicas thanks for the info i never knew that the new solaris was this interesting. although i would find it very hard to find a practical use for it's ability in everyday purposes, i can see it's potential and it is now it FINALLY stands out.

what i really like about what you told me is now i feel solaris is it's own category, and i really like that because i'm tired of seeing "yet another desktop (or server) OS". i hope to see future development and improvements.

i don't really have much of a problem with oracle. they tend to have a very MS personality to them (meaning, if they can't figure out how to join the competition, they buy it out) but at least they're not big enough to slack off or abuse their power.

i'm still waiting for gpu passthrough for virtualbox and then i'm content.

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what i really like about what you told me is now i feel solaris is it's own category, and i really like that because i'm tired of seeing "yet another desktop (or server) OS". i hope to see future development and improvements.

Solaris has always stood out in one way or another for enterprise solutions.. The problem is, just like how some desktop solutions don't scale up to be useful in the enterprise, it's often the case that enterprise solutions don't scale down to be useful to desktop users.. ZFS was supposed to be the filesystem to end all filesystems, the best of the best, it was designed to do everything that anybody would ever want in a filesystem.... And in a lot of ways, that's true... but nobody in their right mind would run it on a laptop with a single SSD over some of the lighter weight linux alternatives to ZFS..

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... but nobody in their right mind would run it on a laptop with a single SSD over some of the lighter weight linux alternatives to ZFS..

I do just that with Illumos ... but then again my name is *Napoleon*!

Seriously though, I look at my colleagues who run Ubuntu on their Laptops and I glow with pride when I get to show off the power of Solaris on mine ... but the days that that happens are few and far between, and the Apps that just work in the Linux sphere make me feel like changing to Linux more each day.

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The problem with virtualization on every OS besides the new Solaris is that you need to run an entire OS for each virtualization..

I dont think this is correct. Linux also has something similar to Containers, which means Linux does not need to run an entire OS if they use Containers. Also, IBM copied Solaris containers and the IBM copy is called WPAR (or LPAR). HP-UX have Containers since old. FreeBSD also have Containers, called Jails. But the other OSes dont virtualize everything, like the network stack that Solaris 11 have done.

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I dont think this is correct. Linux also has something similar to Containers, which means Linux does not need to run an entire OS if they use Containers. Also, IBM copied Solaris containers and the IBM copy is called WPAR (or LPAR). HP-UX have Containers since old. FreeBSD also have Containers, called Jails. But the other OSes dont virtualize everything, like the network stack that Solaris 11 have done.

Thanks, kebbart!
I was going to mention this as well.
BTW, lpar is OLD. Predates solaris, and isn't containers. It is HARDWARE based OS partitioning, IIRC. Thus it is basically bomb-proof, but it has more overhead than os-level virtualization. WPAR is more like solaris containers, but, again, not exactly the same. Don't ask me what the difference is, I don't know.
Linux can virtualize the network stack (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...al-networking/).
If worse comes to worst, you can always virtualize EVERYTHING with k/qemu (kqemu is qemu with some additional kernel modules for speedups, though this might be merged with qemu now).
Of course this entails performance hits unless you enable paravirtual drivers.

Ok, it seems that the new year 2010, Linux Open vSwitch, is a copy of Solaris Crossbow (virtual network stack). Cool.

If worse comes to worst, you can always virtualize EVERYTHING with k/qemu (kqemu is qemu with some additional kernel modules for speedups, though this might be merged with qemu now).
Of course this entails performance hits unless you enable paravirtual drivers.

But if you use QEMU, then you are essentially starting up entire OSes, right? It is like, VMware? Not light weight, like Containers?